FRANCESCO PETRARCH: FIFTEEN SONNETS FROM PETRARCH Selected by Thomas Wentworth Higginson Edited by Cassidy Hughes Francesco Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374) is the supreme poet of love in the Western tradition, alongside poets such as Sappho and William Shakespeare. Francesco Petrarch is also the Renaissance artist and humanist par excellence. Petrarchism is termed the longest poetic tradition in the Occident, and Petrarch has influenced poets such as Maurice Scève, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Torquato Tasso, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, Joachim Du Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard, Rainer Maria Rilke and Robert Graves, among hundreds of others.
Petrarch's Canzoniere, often also known as the Rime Sparse, lies at the heart of his achievement: it comprises 366 poems about love, written in Italian and worked on right up until Petrarch's death in 1374. In the Canzoniere, there are hundreds of sonnets, 29 canzoni, 7 ballate, 9 sestine and 4 madrigali. Petrarch's other major works included Secretum, Triumphs, Africa, De Vita Solitaria, verse epistles, biographies, allegorical ecologues and hundreds of letters.
Includes a note on Francesco Petrarch, a bibliography, a timeline, and a gallery of pictures.
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